Guerrilla Girls

Active since 1985

The Guerrilla Girls are an anonymous collective of artist-activists promoting gender and racial equality.

To maintain their anonymity, group members wear gorilla masks in public and adopt the names of historic women artists, such as Käthe Kollwitz and Frida Kahlo, as pseudonyms.

Guerrilla Girls posters first appeared in 1985, pasted onto structures in lower Manhattan. Combining bold advertising-style graphics with eye-opening facts and figures, the posters detailed discrimination by the city’s art galleries and museums against women artists and artists of color.

Humor is also a vital part of the Guerrilla Girls’s art, making their serious messages accessible and engaging. The group continues to address sexism and racism in the art world, but also targets Hollywood, mass media, art censorship, government corruption and apathy, and the battle for reproductive rights.

The Guerrilla Girls first operated through poster campaigns and protests in New York; they now maintain an online presence and present public lectures and performances around the world. They have published several books, including The Guerrilla Girls’ Bedside Companion to the History of Western Art (1998).

The collective continues to embrace a populist approach to art, producing their artwork in quantity to reach a broad audience.